


the halfway point

by hooksandheroics



Series: this has got to be the good life [2]
Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: A Light Dusting of Angst, F/M, Fluff, It's just a sprinkle, seriously, slight angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-27
Updated: 2018-12-27
Packaged: 2019-09-28 06:15:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17177465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hooksandheroics/pseuds/hooksandheroics
Summary: Scott Moir, a puppy, and 24 hours of driving.(Written for Secret Santa, author will be revealed soon!)





	the halfway point

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Nats_North_by_North](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nats_North_by_North/gifts).



> to my dear Aimée, i'm sorry it took so long. but you've been a nice girl this year so have my little gift. babe, i love you, you're an amazing human being. 
> 
> also, i did not think this through. when you finish reading this, you'd know who i am. but i wouldn't give that away now in the author's notes. just. i'm sorry.

It happens in the middle of a grey afternoon, at a park that’s devoid of people because the forecast said “rain, lots of rain”, and he shouldn’t be out here shivering and miserable because it  _ definitely  _ will rain a lot, but he is. He has been walking a mindless loop around the gardens for almost two hours, passing by the bench at least five times before succumbing to the ache in his arches and sinking into the cold hard wood.

There’s little to be said as to why he is spending this afternoon lonely and cold in a public place when he could be spending it in bed with the love of his life, tucked under grey covers and warm. 

The phone in his pocket hasn’t rung since yesterday. His emails remain stubbornly at 517 unreads. His leg hasn’t stopped jiggling ever since he sat down. He’d closed the door and the finals click had immediately filled him with regret.

It feels like waiting on time, watching it from afar as it flows like molasses over everything in his vision – when in reality, he is waiting on two phone calls. Both of which, he’s not even sure he’s ever going to get. 

Bar that – it feels like waiting for Godot. There is no impending relief in the horizon for Scott Moir. 

What’s waiting for Scott Moir is a choice – to go on or to stop, simply. But for now, Scott Moir chooses to sit on this bench, waiting for at least a drizzle to tell him to move. 

And it is as he’s contemplating the long drive that he hears it.

It’s a whimper at most. A small quiet thing, just behind him, in the bushes. When he hears the next noises, his breath hitches because a year later and his heart still knows the exact same pattern of sounds the creaking of George’s wheels make. 

And just when he thought this afternoon could not get any weirder, a bark startles him and a second later, there’s a pitbull in front of him with no hind legs and a lolling tongue, greeting him by plopping down at his feet.

“George,” he says in disbelief.

George barks.

George, who should be at the shelter or – or in someone’s home. George who was taken from him a year ago. 

He gathers the dog in his arms and squeezes so tight he fears it’ll hurt him, but George just licks at his chin so fervently that his heart begins beating fast at the relief. 

Scott’s first instinct was to reach for his phone and call  _ her _ , but he fights that urge because she said she wants to be alone and if there’s anything that he does best, it’s respecting her wishes. “Hey, buddy,” he tells George who is still wiggling excitedly in his grasp. “Where did you escape from, huh? You’re going to worry everybody sick looking for you.” He checks the collar and it still says to return to the shelter if found – and well. 

The plan that hatches in Scott’s head is not the best thought-out plan he’s ever thought of, but George is here and he’s desperate.

“What do you say to a road trip, huh, buddy?” he scratches behind the dog’s ear, earning a little whine.

The dog barks as if in response. He is probably hungry. But he still takes it as a ‘yes’. 

The sky crackles and pours so suddenly that he has no choice but to carry a decidedly heavier dog in his arms and into his car.

Thus begins the longest drive of his life.

*

It only becomes apparent to her during the last leg of the tour, going through the motions as if on autopilot as exhaustion takes over. 

The first time, it hits her straight to the heart, making her fingers cold.

Tessa is not a suspicious person, she trusts the people that she loves. She believes that it is integral in any relationship and holds it as a principle to establish trust as a foundation. When she told Scott this a long time ago, he’d smiled and kissed her forehead, and said, “You trust me, right? And you love me? That’s enough.”

And she’d said, “That’s enough.” 

So sure and so relieved, right there in his embrace. 

She’d held that moment in her heart for the longest time, bringing it out at times of doubt, reminding herself that this is what the greatest loves of all time hold deep in their cores. 

Trust. 

And yet, in the middle of the night, as the bus zips through empty lanes with nothing in her ears but a buzz from the wind whipping against their momentum, she found him sitting with his back to her, silhouette lined with the light from his phone.

He never did figure out how to lower the display brightness of his screen. She could imagine him squinting at it as he reads whatever it is that he’s reading, and she smiles into her pillow, thinking how much of an old man he is at heart, despite his endless energy. Until he brings his phone to his ear, rising from the bed and walking towards the door.

The last she hears before he disappears behind the door of their room is a small word, a name. When she thinks about it, even now as she lays on her bed, pillow wet with tears, that it could have been anyone’s. There are literally thousands of people with that name.

And yet.

“Hello, Kait,” he murmurs into his phone.

And she sees it in her head as she dreams  that night – there’s a glass heart and there a hammer, and the hammer is held by the only person she thought would never use it. There he is with it in the air, and as he’d brought it down, the only words she speaks are , “Please, don’t.”

*

“Hello,” he says into the phone, albeit uselessly.

George sits obediently by his feet as Scott leans on his car. They’re at a gas station for about half an hour now, all while trying to get a phone call through. To say that he’s frustrated – is  an understatement. George must be feeling it too because he keeps rubbing his face against his leg, trying to get Scott to pet him. It works and Scott sighs and relents. 

This is the fifth try and every time the ringing stops to tell him that his call has been  dropped, his resolve gets weaker.

The skies remind her of Tessa’s Prince costume, the color between today and tonight. A purple so nostalgic that his fingers ache to send her a text and just… say it. 

And on the drive here, he almost had.

The last text he sent her was from a week ago, asking about her ice cream preferences. It’d been a hot day and he knew just how much she’d been craving ice cream that even if it wasn’t on the list, he’d wanted to bring some home to her and make her smile. 

He’d just wanted to see her smile again.  

All he’d wanted was to hear her laugh again.

But the ice cream had melted on the counter and the bedsheets had never borne  the print of her body ever again after that day.

His phone chirps with an incoming text message.

_ Are you really gonna drive all the way here? _

He responds almost as quickly.

**Yes.**

_ You don’t have to. We can meet somewhere. A halfway point. _

**Where?**

_ Thunder Bay. You can be there in twelve hours, and then another back. _

**Are you sure?**

_ Yes. Get driving. _

And he does.

*

It was the little things at first, Tessa remembers. The bowl of cereal has gone soggy in front of her as her mother places groceries into their respective places. The little things had chipped away at her until there was nothing left but doubt and suspicion – which, she’d  _ sworn _ she would never become. 

She doesn’t have trust issues.

But when he’d gone  out of his way to hide his phone, deleted his text history, and went out of the room to take a call – 

She doesn’t have trust issues.

Twenty-one years and never has he ever hidden his phone from her. Through girlfriends and… decidedly non-girlfriends, through car rides and fighting over the aux cord, through uncertainty and surety. 

Now.

“Honey, your food,” her mother says, soft and kind. Tessa knows that she’s trying to veil her pity with humor, and she sees through it. One of the most painful parts about all of this is probably the fact that she packed up and left to clear her head and she still finds herself thinking about him – where he is, what he’s doing, why he’s doing it. Why did he hide? What is he hiding?

There isn’t supposed to be an urge in her to think about all these things. She went back to London to be with her mom, to be regaled with  Christmas childhood stories, to be warm and safe. And yet, she thinks about him.

She’d told Kate, of course she had . And Kate hadn’t  asked her why she hadn’t given him a chance to explain, or why she’d left with just a small note stuck to the refrigerator. 

Her mother knows  that she’s mulled it over and over in her head on the way here. She probably knew that Tessa has turned her phone off. She probably also knows  that it’d been the little things. Like it had been with her and her husband.

And that’s it, Tessa realizes. That’s what she automatically sees whenever she thinks about the little things. When she was younger, she  _ had _ noticed, but she hadn’t thought anything of it.

“Was it like that with you and dad?” 

Her mother looks like she’s been pushed over a cliff with the question – and she doesn’t want to equate her parents’ divorce to her and Scott’s conflict. But the signs are there and it’s clouding her vision with memories from long ago, back when her parents would sequester themselves in their room and have quiet conversations that would still carry over the walls of the house like creeping vines.

The walls are pristine but they crumble underneath, and Tessa doesn’t want to think that that’s what is happening. And yet –

“Tess, no,” her mom replies, sitting across from her. Kate takes her hand in hers and squeezes reassuringly. “What you and Scott have, it’s different. You can’t see this and think about your dad and me.” Her grip becomes tighter. “Promise me, baby.”

She nods.

If she’s being honest, she doesn’t know what she thinks.

*

“I’m an idiot,” he says.

Lights travel across the dark interior of the car in waves, erratic, fast, as he drives some few kilometers per hour past the speed limit. 

His hands are freezing even with the heat turned on, and his eyes are cloudy with the tears he’s been trying to fight ever since he’d turned onto the the highway ramp. George is quietly sitting in the passenger seat, buckled in and swaddled in a little blanket he keeps in the trunk. He’s taken the wheels off the puppy from the moment he laid down with his head on the console, looking up at him with those huge black eyes. 

“I’m sorry I’m keeping you for the night,” he tells his sleepy little companion. “But I really… I missed you and you’re the only one who can keep me company during this long ride. I swear we’re going to be there soon, just… hang in there, eh?”

George gives a sleepy whine and closes his eyes, and Scott lets him. It’s been a long day. 

He keeps his eyes focused on the road, trying to gauge his travel time. Some few hours into the drive, he had received message after message – from his brothers, from his mother. And then, to his surprise, his father. He couldn’t just stop in the middle of this journey and answer their queries when he was losing precious time.

But an incessantly ringing phone later, sometime before taking a right, and he’s having an earful from his mother. 

“Scott Patrick,” Alma says calmly over the phone. That’s his mother – they way you can tell if she’s worried is if she’s calm. “Where are you right now and why haven’t you been answering our texts?”

“I’m on my way to Thunder Bay,” he answers simply. George lifts his head from the window finish.

“Thunder Bay?” and yes, that sounds like Danny. He immediately figures out that he’s on speaker. “What’s in Thunder Bay?”

This is the question, he thinks, that can make or break his whole life, and there his brother is , asking it as nonchalant as anything. When he took a few seconds to answer, Danny took over the phone and said, “Little brother, what’s going on?”

For all that he and Danny fight and wrestle like typical brothers, it’s moments like this that make Scott grateful that they know each other like the backs of their hands. His brother’s tone has become soft and concerned, and the weight in Scott’s chest drops . He wants to just cry and tell him all about the things he’s done in the past that put him in this situation – when all he really wants to do is –

“I want to ask Tessa to marry me,” he replies, voice cracking. A few tears start making their way down his cheeks and he can’t help it. “But I fucked up and – god, Danny, I just want to do this right.”

He’d become aware that he’s now crying openly, too distractingly that he puts on his hazard lights and stops on the side of the road.  _ Wasting precious time _ , his mind hisses, but he wanted to make it there and back alive so he stops.

George jumped into his lap and starts licking his cheeks, a welcome reminder that he has someone there to support him. 

“And this has anything to do with Thunder Bay?” Danny asks. 

Scott sniffles. “Remember when I asked for grandma’s ring five years ago? Back when…”

“…back when it was still Kait, yeah I remember.”

He was stupid back then, he’d wanted to forget about everything – about silver medals and the cold that used to never bother him until the moment he laid down on the ice in Sochi and stared up at the ceiling of the arena, letting himself be blinded by the lights. For a moment there, he’d thought about just… not skating. He’d thought about letting the music run and not getting up. Would it make any difference? Tessa was beside him but she’d been far away .

A year was a blur, Kaitlyn was a blur – everything was a blur with the right alcohol in his hand, he had so immaturely thought. 

And Kait, she was the best. She knew just what channels on the TV he’d like to be on when he came home, she knew how to navigate around his kitchen like she belonged there, she knew just what to say when he’s being a self-pitying asshole crying into their bedsheets. 

Who knew what came out of his drunken mouth while Kait was running a soothing hand down his back as he retched his stomach out into their toilet bowl. Who knew if he’d spilled all that he’s ever held close to his heart and never shown anybody to her as he drowned in the waves that he was trying to fight.

What he didn’t know was just how empty his house would be without some inexperienced but determined chef puttering around in his kitchen. No cold feet digging into his thigh as they watched late night TV. Kaitlyn was always in bed early, that was her routine. And she was also a morning person. 

Which made for a huge contrast because he would always catch himself surprised every morning and find the kitchen  _ not _ burning – and he would feel the shittiest when he’d think this was how every morning should be like. 

Kaitlyn, he had realized now, on the side of the road going to Thunder Bay to meet with her, was the perfect girl. She truly was. But she wasn’t for him. And he, in turn, sure as hell wasn’t for her. 

To say that he was programmed from early childhood to deal with grumpy little girls with a secret formula of hot chocolate with a little bit of coffee, to say that he was  _ trained _ to identify and put out a small kitchen fire at a moment’s notice, to say that his heart was molded around the moods and expressions of the woman who would undoubtedly become the best ice dancer in the world – wouldn’t be far from the truth. 

And there he was, thinking that marrying Kaitlyn would help him be better. 

He had hidden the ring at her house the moment he’d got it – a whole idea in his head about a proposal, and a reservation at a restaurant just waiting for his call, as if this was how it’s supposed to feel before asking to marry the woman he’s been with for two years. A feeling of emptiness at the pit of his stomach, threatening to swallow him whole.

There was a simple line in his head, marquee in red, that went:  _ She’s not Tessa _ over and over until the guilt ate him up and he just… never proposed.

“Was it still with Kait?” Danny asks. “But she’s in Winnipeg and –”

“Thunder Bay is our halfway point,” Scott says. 

“And Tessa?” 

_ Fuck _ . “She thought I was… she probably thought I was trying to get back with her, Danny. I wasn’t the best at – all of this. I was scared that if I talked to her about this, she would freak out and just… what if she didn’t want it?”

Danny’s voice comes softer, almost swallowed by the static and the noises of the cars passing him by. George whines under his chin. “You should have told her, still.”

“I know.”

“Well,” Danny sounds relieved. “At least you know. But you gotta make it up to Tess, you of all people should know how her mind works.”

“Yeah,” he answered.

“Good.” Danny said, and that’s that for the phone calls until now, when his phone rings and it’s Kaitlyn on the other end.

It isn’t anything special, just her confirming that yes, she has the ring with her, here’s the address to the diner-slash-inn where they’re supposed to meet, and yes, her husband’s driving.

It isn’t anything special, Scott thinks, but he stops at the side of the road and just stares ahead, thinking that this is really happening. He starts thinking about getting home and seeing Tess for the first time in a week, kneeling in front of her in the middle of their living room, holding her hands, asking her to marry him –

He pulls out his phone and dials her number.

One and a half rings later and she’s answering, all groggy voice and annoyed. She never did appreciate it when phone calls ruined her sleep.

“Tess, hi,” he speaks, and his voice is already cracking.

“Scott?” she asks. “Scott!” she now says a little more clearly. 

“Hey,” and he this time, he realizes that he’s audibly crying. “Don’t worry, I’m okay. I just… wanted to hear your voice.”

And maybe it’s the night sky, or the fact that he’s outside his car shivering the cold because he thought this would at least wake him up, or that George has clambered out of the window in solidarity, or the fact that she hasn’t hung up on him yet – but he feels at peace. 

It’s quiet, it’s still. When his thoughts were a jumble of apology and regret and guilt just a few minutes ago, hearing Tessa say his name even just over the phone felt like being doused with warm water.

“I miss you,” she tells him.

“I miss you, too,” he replies. “I’m coming home soon okay. There’s just this… I’m going to Thunder Bay right now, I’m driving but I have… I have someone with me. He’s been helping me the whole time.” He smiles down at George chewing on his pant leg. “But – I’m just. I need to be honest with you. I need to tell you before I get home.”

“Scott…”

He sighs. “When I get home, I’m going to have my grandma’s ring in my pocket. I’m gonna be all sweaty and gross, but I’m going to ask you to marry me. My grandma’s ring, GMac gave it to my mom before he passed away and when I saw it for the first time, I just knew it was fate. It’s green, the color of your eyes, small, the size of your finger and I just knew – Tess.

“I made a lot of mistakes when I was young, and I’m still making a lot of them now.” He continues, sitting now on the gravel beside his car, George making his way onto his lap. He buries his face into his warm fur for a moment before speaking again. “I thought I could just marry some other girl to ignore the fact that my whole life, I have been in love with you. In some form or another. I told you this already, but I was planning on marrying Kaitlyn back then.

“And the ring… this is gonna sound crazy, but I kinda forgot about it.”

“Scott,” she sighs, sounding in disbelief, and he smiles a little because he just  _ knows _ in his heart that she’s smiling a little too. That he’d made her smile a little, even if it’s with his own idiocy.

“I hid it in her house, under a loose floorboard,” he continues, a watery laugh in his voice. “And there it sat for the last five years. Until this morning. It’s making its way towards Thunder Bay, too. Kaitlyn’s with her husband right now, en route.”

She makes this little sound, muffled by her sheets, and it’s the best sound in the world. He lets it ring for a few more minutes until he hears her sniffle and shift under her covers.

“Hey,” he says. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I hid everything from you. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about my plans. I thought I was doing the right thing by keeping it a secret. I guess I was… I was scared, T. Actually, I still am, right now. I’m scared that when I get home to an empty bed, it’s going to stay forever that way. That I fucked this all up so irreversibly that… you would never want me back.

“And I know you’re at your mom’s house,” he adds. “Kate sent me a text earlier this morning. If you wanna stay there for a little while longer, that’s okay. I’m going to be in Montreal waiting for you with the kitchen and the living room tidied up –

“Scott –”

“And the shelves dusted –”

“Scott, stop.”

“Tess?”

She laughs this tiny quiet laugh that soothes the tension in his chest, even when he’s anticipating the worst. 

“I’m home,” she says, and suddenly, all is right in the world. “Come back. Be here with me.”

“Okay,” he says, tearing up. “Okay, I’m getting that ring and I’m coming home, baby. I promise.”

It doesn’t matter that she’s never addressed the proposal question. He’s got time. 

*

The diner says no pets allowed, but it’s 9 o’clock in the evening and it’s cold outside and when he turns on his charm, he really does  _ turn _ it on.

So now he has George beside him, sitting quietly in the booth as they wait for their food to arrive. Kaitlyn assured him that they’re just twenty more minutes away, but his leg keeps jiggling under the table. 

Is the ring still the same color? Is it still the same as he remembers it?

Fifty more of those questions pestering in his head until their plates arrive, the waitress giving him a tight-lipped look of disapproval as her eyes travel to his whimpering dog. A hundred more of those questions until Kaitlyn and her husband, Stephan, step into the diner, both looking direly exhausted that he feels that same pang of guilt in his stomach stab at him from the inside.

But it was not a big deal, her husband says with a small smile. Kaitlyn rolls her eyes with a fond look on her face. “He’s a big ol’ romantic,” she says. “When he heard about your story, he practically dragged me out of the house.”

“Thank you,” he tells them both.

When Kait slides the box across the table and he holds it in his hand, the tension dies away. There’s no more of it in his chest, not a single sliver of it.

Not when he knows that when he comes back home, she’ll be in their bed, asleep. And he’s going to ask her again, and he’s going to get a reply – and no matter what the reply, he’s going to be happy just having her with him again under the same roof. 

(He really wants her to say yes, but even if it takes ten more years, he’ll take it. There’s really no next partner for him, on the ice and in real life.)

He opens the box and the ring gleams at him, green just like he remembers it.

He doesn’t notice the still silence until Kait speaks and breaks it. 

“It’s a lovely ring, I hope you don’t mind that we took a peek,” she says, giving him a sly smile. “And I really hope you get it right this time.”

“Me too.”

*

In the end, Tessa thinks as it happens in slow motion right in front of her eyes, there was no end. It’s almost 10am and she keeps checking her phone for texts even as she knows that he’s driving back with his buddy.

They must be close.

She  _ hasn’t _ been awake the past twelve hours, worrying about his health, his sanity – for driving almost 24 hours with little to no breaks – sincerely hoping that he and the person he’s with are taking turns behind the wheel. She  _ has _ been awake for ten of those hours, however, wondering just how crazy this past week has been.

She’s on her third glass of orange juice when the door opens to surprise her with  _ not _ Scott but – a little creature with wheels as hind legs, clambering all over their little home as if he’s been here before and –

Right after him comes Scott, laughing at the dog’s eagerness, presenting a very vivid memory from a year ago, when they had the exact same color of puppy, getting used to wheels, moving around their unit like a child in a candy store.

This is when she realizes.

He might be a little (a lot) bigger than when they had him but the familiar way he’s plopped himself down on that little corner that used to be his is enough to make it click. “George,” she says under her breath, shocked.

Scott, sweaty and gross like he’d said on the phone, stands in the middle of the living room, bright grin on his exhausted face, adorably rumpled, but still upright and breathing, and spreads out his arms as if to say ‘ _ here I am’ _ , and there he is.

Tessa finds herself standing right in front of him, tears starting to form at the corners of her eyes and threatening to cloud her vision. And when he gets down on one knee, that’s when they start falling.

“I haven’t even said my piece yet,” he says, noticing her tears, but he’s crying too.

“You haven’t explained why George is here  _ yet _ ,” she tells him and he shakes his head at her, smiling.

“That’s a long story, let me get to the good part first, please.”

Tessa rolls her eyes fondly, earning her a grin. “Okay, go on.”

He clears his throat but his voice comes out wobbly, still. “Okay.” He takes a deep breath. “This has been a hard week. And I’m mostly to blame.” He raises his hazel eyes to her and the expression on his face says it all. Tessa doesn’t doubt him, not anymore, not one bit. 

“Twenty-two years ago, I made a promise,” he tells her. “Not with words, but with a gesture. I held your hand and I thought to myself that this is the only girl I will ever hold hands with, the way that I hold hands with her. No one else. 

“Partly because you were a girl and I didn’t wanna hold hands with anymore girls, not if I could help it.”

She laughs, he smiles.

“And then, I made another promise. 2010, I told myself that I will always come back to you, no matter what. If we win or we lose, even if we fight –  _ especially _ when we fight. I made a lot more of those promises in the coming years, some I broke and some I kept, but for the past… three years. Or more. There’s only been one promise I’ve wanted to make.” His smile grows so bright that it finds its way to her heart, making her warm all over.

There is a certain atmosphere to the morning, to the stillness of it all, as the turmoil in her mind quietens to a murmur, focusing on the love of her life as he lays out his heart for her.

“Tessa, I promise to be yours, however you want me. And that no matter what your answer is, that I’ll be here forever. But here’s the ring if you say yes.” He brings out a dark velvet box from his jacket pocket and she sees the tremble in his hands as he opens it., the most gorgeous emerald shining so starkly from its band. “So, Tessa, marry me?”

She bites her lip because there’s really no other answer but she still likes watching him squirm even if the moment is heavy with anticipation. George puts his head up as if witnessing the tension unfold. And when she nods, followed by a squeaked out “yes”, Scott gets up and envelops her in the warmest hug, kisses her with all the love that she’s missed – forgetting the past week. 

Forgetting the past years.

All the while remembering all the little things.

The way that only  _ he _ knows some parts of her that no one is privy to, the way that she finds herself looking out into the future  _ sure _ that it will always be with him. The way that her own promises to him were engraved into her skin as scars, carved into her heart as the million times it broke and mended through growth pains and uncertainties. Her promises beat in between them whenever they hug before taking the ice, whenever they fall into bed together.

It truly is about the little things, she thinks, as he slips the ring onto her finger, tears staining his cheeks as she’s sure hers are the same.

When he buries a small yawn to the side of her head, laughing, she decides that it’s time to go to bed. Put the battle to rest.

It’s time to go home.

**Author's Note:**

> hope you liked it!


End file.
